Management of Chronic Orofacial Pain: Attitudes Among Patients and Dentists in a Swedish County

Abstract

The purpose was to survey attitudes towards management of chronic orofacial pain (COP). Questionnaires were mailed to 30 randomized dentists and to 30 consecutive COP patients, examined 16 months earlier by a pain group of dental specialists. Fifty-seven per cent of the patients reported that their pain was the same as or worse than before and was disturbing. Few were dissatisfied with the examinations. Fifty-nine per cent thought that the consultations had been good. The surveyed dentists judged the most common causes of COP to be neurogenic and psychogenic in origin; they were overwhelmingly positive to the idea of a pain group (93%) and could consider referring patients (97%). Pain-inducing local diseases occurred but were not dominant among these COP patients. We concluded that management of COP in a pain group appears to be meaningful, as reflected by the respondents' attitudes but would gain by a closer collaboration with medical expertise.

Management of Chronic Orofacial Pain: A Survey of General Dentists in German University Hospitals

“…In contrast to an earlier survey with similarly high numbers of patients, our investigation referred to COP, not just acute pain [20]. It is surprising on first sight that the prevalence of approximately 5% is rather small in a population of dental patients compared with prevalences ranging between 10% and 42% reported by earlier publications [8,13,22,23]. However, the populations described in these papers cannot be compared with the patients enrolled in our survey, as our study consisted only of patients referred to university hospitals, whereas the cited references describe general population studies.…”

“…Strengths of our study include an unexpectedly high number of patients (34,000). Earlier surveys with a similar design did not refer to chronic pain at all [13,14,20]. Compared with previous studies, this is the first nationwide German survey in the management of COP [21][22][23][24][25][26].…”

“…Only a few investigations on the current management of patients with COP are published. A detailed assessment of pain therapy methods seldom is the primary objective of these studies [13][14][15][16]. In a previous study confined to one single German region [17] we revealed major deficits in the ambulatory management of COP.…”

Versorgung von Patienten mit chronischem orofazialem Schmerz

“…Über die aktuellen diagnostischen und therapeutischen Behandlungsstrategien der Zahnmediziner und Mund-Kiefer-Gesichtschirurgen bei der Behandlung von Patienten mit chronischen orofazialen Schmerzen existieren nur wenige Veröffentlichungen,wobei zumeist die detaillierte Erfassung von schmerztherapeutischen Methoden in der Behandlung von Patienten mit orofazialen Schmerzen nicht das primäre Studienziel war [4,5,17,24,27].…”

“…Dennoch bestehen oft niedrige Rücklaufquo-ten [5,10,11],wie die vorliegende Untersuchung erneut zeigt. Vor diesem Hintergrund liegt allerdings die Anzahl von 985 Patienten mit orofazialen Schmerzsyndromen im Verhältnis zu den beteilig- [4,7,24,26].…”